


Finn Swears (No, Really!)

by avmenace



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: And Luke, Established Poe Dameron/Finn, Force-Sensitive Finn, Is this how you tag?, M/M, Stormpilot, This ship has ruined me, and General Organa, brief mentions of Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-17 22:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7288867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avmenace/pseuds/avmenace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn's unexpected use of the English language preceded by other surprising things that people didn't see coming. I don't know why anyone's surprised by anything Finn does. He's kind of a wildcard. For like the whole movie. I obviously don't know how to summarize OR tag. Go me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finn Swears (No, Really!)

To Finn’s great confusion, he was often met with astonishment pretty much any time he went anywhere and did anything. Sure, the astonishment that he was a Stormtrooper who defected was something he expected, but once people got over that (and that certainly took longer than those who cared for Finn wanted it to take), he continued to surprise them with the bits and pieces of himself that he revealed.

First it was the cooking. Finn could cook like nobody’s business. The food that the members of the Resistance subsisted on wasn’t half bad, but with Finn around, everyone started to look forward to mealtimes that much more. He humbly admitted that it was something he picked up during his time with the First Order, having to cook and fend for himself when he was off-base. Rey simply looked awed (or as close to it as she could manage while also teasing Finn relentlessly), and Poe had exclaimed that he always knew Finn was a keeper.

Then it was the drawing. Finn loved to sketch. He did so sporadically and was not very shy about it – doodling on the edges of whatever he could get his hands on during mission debriefs and in the mess (whenever he wasn’t in the kitchen, that is). His room was practically covered in sketches of Rey, Poe, BB-8, Poe’s X-wing, the landscape of D’Qar, and even General Organa and Master Skywalker had made it into his collage of drawings. He had a loose, flowing style that surprised people even more. Why everyone expected him to be rigid and stilted was honestly beyond Finn at times. He was no Picasso, but his abilities weren’t anything to sneeze at either.

Then it was his marksmanship – one of the things that had Finn as bewildered as the people who were surprised. Everyone knew that Stormtroopers were supposed to be expert marksmen, but Finn never missed. Never. People would congregate when Finn showed up at the practice fields, causing heat to rise in Finn’s cheeks. He always tuned out the audience and pretended it was Kylo Ren he was shooting at. That certainly made it easier for him to handle his frustration concerning the injury that the Sith had inflicted on him. He never dared to tell anyone that he was picturing the general’s son, though; he liked General Organa and didn’t want anyone making a thoughtless comment that would hurt her – or worse, make her angry at Finn.

Then Rey had returned with Master Skywalker, and as it happened, Finn was Force sensitive. He personally thought that that explained a lot about him being able to last as long as he had in his lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren but kept that opinion to himself. Poe had this habit of telling Finn to give himself more credit when he said things like that. Regardless, he had started training in a minimal capacity with Master Skywalker and Rey. He was nowhere near their level, but General Organa helped him come to terms with and understand his newfound abilities. Poe had cornered him not long after he started training, told him that him being a Jedi was hot, kissed him hard and fast, and then sauntered away, casual as could be.

But the thing that surprised everyone – and, really, why was literally everyone surprised at this? – was how much Finn cursed. The first time he had let an expletive loose had been on a mission with Poe and some of the other pilots.

“Holy shit,” Finn had exclaimed as Poe wove in and out of the fire from TIE fighters. Finn was doing his damnedest to hold them off, as Pava and Snap continued firing on the First Order base they had been sent to destroy.

“Did you just say ‘shit’?!” Poe had almost yelled back, not even batting an eye at the enemy forces.

“Yes?” Finn responded, uncertainly. Maybe Poe didn’t like cursing. Maybe there was a ban on explicit language in the Resistance. Maybe that was a totally made up word. But that couldn’t be. Finn could’ve sworn (pun intended) that he heard Snap utter that same word when he had lost some card game the pilots had been playing in the mess one day.

“You –oh, hell!” Poe said, as he dodged a very close TIE fighter. Finn quickly took them out, wondering at his favorite pilot’s previous comment. They didn’t have time to resume their conversation, though, as Snap and Jessika returned at that moment, and they all escaped into hyperspace. Once they returned to D’Qar, Poe had practically dragged him back to their shared room.

“You curse?” Poe had asked, looking for all the word like a curious puppy with his head tilted, eyes wide, and unruly curls splayed around his face.

“Is that such a surprise?” Finn responded, sitting on his bed in order to resist the urge to kiss his adorable boyfriend senseless.

Poe scratched at his head for a second, considering that. “I guess… I mean, yes. There’s so much you don’t know about, and people around here don’t really cuss that much… I just don’t know where you would’ve picked it up, so it kinda startled me, buddy.”

Finn tried (and failed) to suppress a snort as Poe flopped down on his back beside him. Laying back so that they were shoulder to shoulder, he replied. “Poe, I grew up hearing all kinds of language. The commanders disapproved of cursing, but it didn’t stop any of us. It was the only way we could be rebellious and a bit less confined, I guess.”

Poe turned his head to the side and planted a kiss on Finn’s neck. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you? Just when I think I know everything there is to know, you go and turn that idea upside down.”

“Maybe you should stop trying to peg me down then,” Finn replied in a fake-upset voice, gently nudging Poe’s side as he fought a smile.

Poe hummed in acknowledgement, throwing one of his arms across Finn’s chest. The two laid there for a few minutes before Poe’s soft snores broke the quiet that had settled in the room.

“Unbelievable,” Finn murmured to himself, giving Poe’s sleeping form an impossibly fond look before closing his eyes and falling asleep as well.

In the days that followed, Poe tried his damnedest to get Finn to let loose another expletive, but Finn had a better filter than Poe gave him credit for. Even when Finn got his ass handed to him in a rather spectacular fashion during training with Rey, he kept a lid on it.

So, it came as a complete surprise to Poe when he woke up one night to find Finn getting worryingly close to actually thrashing in his sleep and the first words out of the now awake ex-Stormtrooper’s mouth were, “Damn it. Just –shit!” Finn rubbed furiously at his face, trying to work through his frustration with his nightmare.

“You wanna talk about it?” Poe asked quietly, sitting up in bed and laying a comforting arm around Finn’s shoulders.

“I –I want to say no, but… Fuck, it’s always the same thing. We’re crashing on Jakku again and again, but I –I can’t –you…” Finn’s hands trembled as he breathed deeply.

“It’s okay,” Poe comforted, rubbing Finn’s back, always conscious of the healing scar running down the middle. “I’m here. You’re here. We’re okay.” Finn turned towards Poe and buried his face in the pilot’s neck, breathing in his unique and comforting scent.

After Finn had calmed down, Poe gently laid them back down, pulling the comforter over them and resting his forehead against Finn’s. “You know,” Poe muttered to Finn who’s drooping eyelids open just a fraction to focus on Poe, “we’re going to have a real problem here soon.”

A sleepy confused frown stole across Finn’s face, and Poe couldn’t help but think that it was one of the most adorable things he’d ever seen. “What do you mean?” Finn tried to say, but in his tired state it came across slurred together –sounding more like “wayamean?”

The thought that Poe’s smile could light up the whole galaxy flashed through Finn’s mind before he could concentrate on his boyfriend’s answer. “Well,” Poe started slowly, “you only seem to curse in serious, solemn, maybe even potentially deadly situations. And it’s really distractingly attractive.” And before Finn could respond, he leant in and placed a light, chaste kiss on Finn’s lips. Finn looked just a little more alert as he smiled at Poe and snuggled closer to his pilot.

Poe seemed to think that Finn had forgotten this incident, but Finn has a knack for remembering things no matter his state of mind when he learns them. So, it was no surprise to him –in fact he may have been expecting and hoping for exactly this reaction –when they were working on Poe’s X-wing a couple days later, and Finn inevitably moved his arm in the wrong direction and banged it against the solid spacecraft.

“Fuck me,” he muttered under his breath, reaching up to rub his arm as the tool he had been using slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground.

“Maybe later,” Poe – the only person close enough to hear Finn – replied with a wink and an appreciative once-over. It was nothing out of the ordinary (Finn got that look from Poe all the time), but Finn decided that he would definitely be holding Poe to his word later that night.

Poe was more than okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so inspiration for Finn’s “surprising skills” have come from a variety of works (which have become some of my favorite Finn headcanons). Most notably, “The Bearer of Good Food.” I adore that story so, so, so much. It doesn’t even have an overwhelming amount of stormpilot in it (kinda like this), I just really love it. Check it out if you haven’t read it! Sorry I don’t remember all of the inspirational fics. 
> 
> I’m not sure how I feel about this ending. That last bit I wrote before I wrote most of the other stuff, so I’m not sure if I managed to stitch it together all that well… Oh, well!
> 
> My personal inspiration for the part that was all me (the swearing) was that it was just sort of something that came to me, but also my brother and I had a conversation about people being surprised to hear us cursing at school. I thought Finn might be the same way, being a soldier who everyone thinks is unbelievably unaware of the ways of the world and all. I just think there’s no way he’s nearly as naïve and innocent as some fics portray him as.


End file.
